A difficult scene to shoot

R

rc444

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

well we have a DVX at film school and I'm just acquainting myself with some of it's functions and I have a shooting question.

Suppose I was shooting this scene:

We're shooting a scene on the DVX camera. The scene, shot on a steadicam, follows Bob as he walks down a dark hallway inside and out the door into the bright midday sun. The hallway inside is very dark and dingy with very little illumination, and we follow Bob out the door into the blinding midday sun. My question is a) how would you colour balance for this scene? b) how would you set the aperture for this scene? It's tricky because the scene takes place over two locations.

Here's my approach (correct me if I'm wrong):

1. Colour balance - before shooting, you would go outside and colour balance for daylight. That way, when you follow the actor from inside to outside, the outdoor brightness won't look so extreme/obvious when you walk out the door.

2. Exposure - you take a light reading for the aperture outside, and then another light reading for the aperture inside the building. You then aim for a balance between the two light readings. In other words, when you follow the actor from inside to outside, you don't change the aperture, but you make it a mix or average between the indoor and outdoor readings.

The other alternative would be to set the iris to automatic, then you wouldn't have to fuss about having to get the right calculation. I don't know how reliable this would be...

Finally, I guess if you wanted to keep the aperture constant throughout, e.g. f4, you could use lights for the indoor hallway scene to match the natural lighting conditions when the actor walks out the door.

There are many ways to skin a cat, but not all are reliable. I'm only having a stab at this - how would a pro shoot this scene? Perhaps if you're reading this Barry, you might know.

Thanks,
David
 
All good ways to do it (except maybe aiming for middle ground without lighting - the change in contrast is just too much to hold one aperture)

Another (and the best) option is, if you are using a DVX100B to use an external Iris controller and manually pull focus between (pre-measured) settings for inside and outside.


If you can light the interior with outdoor balanced lighting, then you can help reduce both of these problems.

- Mikko
 
I had 2 similar scenes in my movie. The first time I was such in a hurry I didn't have time to think of a scenerio so I just cut the scene from the actor walking in the hallway, then cut to him coming outside, I didn't want to do it but like I said I was in a rush.

Then the second time, I had the irus on manual and as the actor walked from outside to inside I had someone manually change the exposure, so it worked.
 
Without having done this before myself, I'll just give you an idea that I would play around with. You have the right idea with closely matching the illumination from the exterior. Of course the less sunlight you have outside during the day the better (shooting at dawn or at dusk, whenever the sun is on the other side of the building....or when its overcast).

Then pump a lot of diffused light into the hallway so you your lense won't have to open up so much. Then depending on where your practical lighting is in the hallway, I would pump more wattage into that so your contrast matches more evenly.
 
i would say if you have the ability to light the hallway at the same brightness and color temperature as the outside, that way nothing will be adjusted and the transition will look a lot nicer
 
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